Operation Durham

This was a British special forces undertaking by the Special Operations Executive to create and disseminate 'black' propaganda to the German forces in Norway (March/November 1944).

Led by Eric Gjems-Onstad in the Trondheim area, the undertaking soon had more than 100 local volunteers including Magnes Nordnes, an ex-school teacher who recruited many of his ex-pupils to create a network that spread propaganda and misinformation provided from London, and also created a fictitious anti-Nazi German party, the Deutsche Freiheitspartei (German freedom party), whose 'newspaper' the Nordnes network distributed among the total of more than 500,000 items it successfully circulated.

During its existence to November 1944, 'Durham' lost 15 distributors who were arrested and another 20 who had to flee to Sweden.